My commentary on creation, evolution, intelligent design and the evidence for Christianity being objectively true. I am an Australian Christian old-Earth creationist biologist who accepts universal common ancestry (but not evolution).

Thursday, February 03, 2011

My Theory of Progressive Mediate Creation: Index

Having devoted fourteen years (1994-2008) to the Creation/Evolution debate, including my own CreationEvolutionDesign Yahoo discussion group (2001-2005), and

completing a Biology degree (2000-2004), I had quite frankly become bored with Creation/Evolution/Design issues, and more interested in posting on my other two blogs The Shroud of Turin and Jesus is Jehovah!

One of the reasons for my loss of interest is that I am now even more persuaded that the evidence for Christianity being objectively true (i.e. true whether it is believed or not) is now so overwhelming (e.g. Daniels' 70 weeks and the Shroud of Turin), that some form of Creation must be true, and Progressive Creation best fits the Biblical and scientific evidence. And since Christianity is true, Evolution in "the standard scientific theory" sense "that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.'" (Shermer, M.B., "The Gradual Illumination of the Mind," Scientific American, February, 2002. My emphasis) must be false.

I have fallen behind in my reading of Creation/Evolution/Design issues, so what I post may have been said better by someone else more recently, or may even be factually wrong. If that is the case, I ask that a reader will let me know in a comment under that post. And due to the Global Financial Crisis I have had to work as a high school relief (substitute, supply) teacher, mainly teaching Maths and Science, so I have less time to research issues in depth.

What I write will probably be mostly `off the top of my head' and not referenced or linked. This may be an advantage since I tend to get bogged down in detail! Each of these major headings will have minor headings inserted under them. And each heading, major and minor, will be linked to a separate post.

Comments are welcome, but if they are nasty, substandard or off-topic, they won't appear, as per my stated policy.

2. ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE2.1. The Big Bang2.2. Fine-tuning of the Universe2.3. Before the Big Bang?

3. ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM3.1. The Sun3.2. The Planets3.3. Fine-tuning of the Solar System3.4. Uniqueness of the Solar System

4. ORIGIN OF THE EARTH4.1. The Earth-Moon System4.2. Fine-tuning of the Earth4.3. Uniqueness of the Earth4.4. Survival of the Earth

5. ORIGIN OF LIFE5.1. Failure of All Naturalistic Origin of Life Theories5.2. A Minimal Cell5.3. Origin of all the Materials5.4. All the Materials together at the Same Time and Place5.5. Self-assembly of Materials into a Living Organism5.6. Self-replication5.7. Farsightedness of Life's Design

7 comments:

Gerald
said...

Stephen

I can understand how your research might help show that Jesus died for us and rose again, but I'm at a loss as to how proving that or other particular aspects of Christianity proves a god that tinkers with evolution.

If you prove Chrsitainty is objectively true, why couldn't God have stopped at the Big Bang?

>... I'm at a loss as to how proving that or other particular aspects of Christianity proves a god that tinkers with evolution.

I don't claim that my theory of Progressive Mediate Creation "proves a god that tinkers with evolution."

For starters, if my theory of "Progressive Mediate Creation" is true, then evolution in "the standard scientific theory" sense, "that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.'" (Shermer, M.B., "The Gradual Illumination of the Mind," Scientific American, February, 2002. My emphasis) is false.

>... why couldn't God have stopped at the Big Bang?

As Phillip E. Johnson once said, questions starting with "why couldn't God have ...?" are close to meaningless, because, since God is omnipotent, the answer almost always is, "He could have (but didn't)"!

Great posting, although I've always been confused by Ramms flood interpretation. Gen 6 clearly states man beginning to fan out some on the earth. While I have no problem with a local flood, I do have issue with it being limited as far as humanity is concerned. I just don't see this allowed from the text.You'd said to contact you here vs email, and so I am.My true question stems from looking at the old ASA ListserveArchive and good ole Glenn Morton popped up with an objection I've heard recently from the biologos bunch (Collins, Falk, Venema, Enns) that humanity has never suffered a bottleneck of only 8 survivors, nor a beginning with only 2 members.You're a studied fellow and I'm interested in your opinion on this matter.Thanks for all you do.Good shroud blog as well.

If the Shroud of Turin is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified, dead, buried and RESURRECTED body (which it does) then Christianity is true and Naturalism is false. In that case Naturalistic Evolution ("...God had no part in this process") is false.

>My true question stems from looking at the old ASA ListserveArchive and good ole Glenn Morton popped up with an objection I've heard recently from the biologos bunch (Collins, Falk, Venema, Enns) that humanity has never suffered a bottleneck of only 8 survivors, nor a beginning with only 2 members.

I have no problem with that. If you search my blog you will find that I had posted approvingly on E.K.V. Pearce's Genesis 1 Man and Genesis 2 Adam theory. E.g. "Re: snake ritual discovery in Africa".

My question came our poorly. I'm saying that it seems necessary from the text that the flood include all mankind. A region is fine, but all mankind seems necessary from the setting of Gen 6 (when man began to multiply...)

>I'm saying that it seems necessary from the text that the flood include all mankind. A region is fine, but all mankind seems necessary from the setting of Gen 6 (when man began to multiply...)

Disagree. The first principles of believing Christian Biblical interpretation is that: 1) All the relevant Biblical information be considered; and 2) the Bible be assumed not to contradict itself.

The verses I cited above about the Nephilim existing both before and after the Flood shows that the Flood was not global (either geographically or anthropologically).

Bernard Ramm also pointed out that the Table of Nations in Gn 10 states which nations descended from those on the Ark and "no mention of the Mongoloid or Negroid races is made":

"An examination of the Table of Nations of Gen. 10 discloses that no mention of the Mongoloid or Negroid races is made. Some anthropologists believe that it is impossible to make any racial distinctions among humans, others make two main divisions, but most accept with modifications and qualifications and exceptions the triadic division of Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid. As far as can be determined the early chapters of Genesis centre around that stream of humanity (part of the Caucasoid race) which produced the Semitic family of nations of which the Hebrews were a member. The sons of Noah were all Caucasian as far as can be determined, and so were all of their descendants. The Table of Nations gives no hint of any Negroid or Mongoloid peoples." (Ramm, B.L., "The Christian View of Science and Scripture," Paternoster: Exeter UK, 1955, Reprinted, 1960, p.234)

And "Noah certainly was not a preacher of righteousness to the peoples of Africa, of India, of China or of America-places where there is evidence for the existence of man many thousands of years before the flood":

"The purpose of the flood was to blot out the wicked civilization of Mesopotamia, and being a local flood of a short duration we would not expect to find any specific evidence for it, especially after the minimum of another six thousand years of weathering. There are three views of the local flood: (i) Some assert that man never spread beyond the Mesopotamian valley. This is impossible to defend in that it is so well proven that men were to be found outside the Mesopotamian area long before the flood. (ii) G.F. Wright believes that the ice-age drove man into the Mesopotamian valley. (iii) A third view, and the one which we hold, is that the entire record must be interpreted phenomenally. If the flood is local though spoken of in universal terms, so the destruction of man is local though spoken of in universal terms. The record neither affirms nor denies that man existed beyond the Mesopotamian valley. Noah certainly was not a preacher of righteousness to the peoples of Africa, of India, of China or of America-places where there is evidence for the existence of man many thousands of years before the flood (10,000 to 15,000 years in America). The emphasis in Genesis is upon that group of cultures from which Abraham [and through Him Christ-SEJ] eventually came." (Ramm, 1955, p.163).

Since I don't have the time (or inclination) for extended debate on this matter (especially now that this my CED blog is inactive) you have had your last comment on this topic.

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Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Each individual will usually be allowed only one comment under each post. Since I no longer debate (see below), any response by me will usually be only once to each individual under each post. This blog is now inactive, so I may not respond at all.

Debates After more than a decade (1994-2005) debating on Creation/Evolution/Design on Internet discussion groups, I concluded that Internet debates were largely a waste of time, so I ceased debating and started this blog.

Private messages I receive on creation (including Christianity), evolution or design topics, I reserve the right to respond publicly via this blog, minus the senders' personal identifying information.